Skylanders: Swap Force

The third in the Skylanders series, follow up to 2012's Skylanders: Giants.

Platform

Developer

Release Date

Nov 15th 2013

Nov 12th 2013

Oct 18th 2013

Oct 13th 2013

Story

The story and background for the new types of toys is as detailed below:

In Skylanders: Swap Force, Portal Masters embark on an all-new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands, home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in Skylands. During an epic battle, a brave group of Skylanders were caught in the volcano's eruption, which blasted them apart and sent them to Earth. But, the magic of the volcano gave these heroes a remarkable new power -- the ability to swap halves -- turning them into a special team known as the Swap Force.

Meanwhile, Kaos is back with a new evil plan. And now, Portal Masters everywhere must reassemble the Swap Force -- in their original form or in new combinations -- and send them back to Cloudbreak to save Skylands!

Characters

As well as being able to use all of the Skylanders from the original two games, Skylanders: Swap Force introduces 32 brand new characters to play as. This new lineup is made up of 16 Swap Force Skylanders which break apart into two pieces that can be mixed-and-matched between them all and 16 new regular "core" Skylanders that won't have the swapping feature.

That includes new poses for 16 old characters from the first two games and eight Lightcore versions of new and old, bringing the total number of new playable toys to 75. That's a grand total of 174 toys if you include the 99 from Spyro's Adventure and Giants.

In the brand new Starter Pack you will get three Skylanders, that's two Swap Force and one Series 3 returning Skylander. It'll be Wash Buckler, Blast Zone and Ninja Stealth Elf for the consoles and Free Ranger, Rattle Shake and Volcanic Eruptor for the 3DS. There is no Portal Owner's Pack this time due to the need to use the new portal.

To help differentiate between the old and new sets, the base of the Skylanders for Skylanders: Swap Force will be blue instead of the green/orange currently seen on the Spyro's Adventure and Giants toys.

Adventure Packs and Battle Packs

There will be two new Adventure Packs and two new Battle Packs as part of Swap Force. The Adventure Packs are called Tower of Time and Sheep Wreck Island. The Battle Packs are called Fiery Forge and Arkeyan Crossbow.

Tower of Time includes new Skylander "Pop Thorn" as well as the Tower itself and two Magic Items "Battle Hammer" and "Sky Diamond".

Swap Force Abilities

The new Swappable characters can do more than just swap, each of them has a movement ability associated with their lower half, this ability can unlock the special Swap Zones that you'll find in each level.

These abilities are exclusive to the swappable Swap Force characters and have not been retroactively given to existing characters. Just like there are two new characters for each element there are two characters for each ability (you can still manage to get one of each element and have one of each movement type if you choose them carefully).

Portal of Power

The game uses a brand new Portal of Power, redesigned to be able to recognise the ever changing forms of the Swap Force toys. It is unknown whether the new portal will work with Spyro's Adventure and Giants so don't go throwing the old portal out just yet.

To help with the swapping in the 3DS game you will be able to load in all of your figures rather than be stuck with the limit of just two figures that you had in the last two games.

Platforms

The game will appear on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS as well as on mobile devices and the web.